A new app will be introduced as part of the Education Department’s AI tool EdChat, which will save teachers thousands of hours of work.

Adelaide Botanic High School teacher Rebecca Weber was an early adopter of EdChat – an AI tool developed in 2023 by the Department for Education in collaboration with Microsoft; to support students and teachers develop AI skills, but with guardrails in place to protect young users.

Ms Weber identified an opportunity for the new technology to reduce workload when assisting teachers’ assessment of a student’s English language proficiency.

Determining a student’s level of ‘Learning English: Achievement and Proficiency’ (LEAP) Level allows a teacher to identify a student’s level of understanding and plan targeted strategies to support their language development and progress.

The process involves a teacher assessing a text that has been written by a student. In 2024, 31,434 students were assessed, with each writing sample taking an average of 30 minutes to be processed by a teacher.

The app can do the same job in 52 seconds – a significant reduction in workload.

Rebecca Weber said, my focus in using EdChat has been on exploring AI opportunities for innovation, rather than viewing AI as a replacement for teachers.

“I identified the potential to reduce the workload associated with the LEAP leveling process using EdChat. After several months of experimentation, I developed a promising solution, which I presented to the department. They recognised its tremendous potential and supported me in the process”.

“Driven by a deep desire to solve real problems faced by our educators, I took a LEAP of faith and embraced the question, ‘What if?’, transforming challenges into meaningful action”.

“This project has been an exciting opportunity to support my fellow teachers, and ultimately students, through harnessing this technology”, Ms Weber said.

The app, which Ms Weber has been seconded from her school to help with the development of, has been the subject of extensive controlled trials to ensure its reliability and consistency in the results delivered.

Adelaide Botanic, along with about 50 other schools, were engaged in the testing phase to help identify risks, benefits, and to co-design implementation strategies.

Following testing, the LEAP App has been installed in EdChat as one of the tools for teachers who are being provided with training before using it.

EdChat has been rolled out to all department staff, and almost 10,000 students across public schools – with the department making the tool available to all secondary students in the coming years.

The guardrails mean student and teacher interactions are protected, appropriate, and educationally relevant. EdChat also tailors its responses to the year level of the student using it and, unlike other generative AI chatbots, is custom-built for learning and teaching.

Read more about the department's AI chatbot, EdChat.